The ASGC manual is essentially a reference document. Consequently, additional and more specialised ASGC-related material and products are needed to assist application of the ASGC to statistical work. Many of these materials and products are available for sale to ABS clients, as well as for use by ABS personnel. The following is a listing of some of the more important types of related material and products.

The NLI consists of two parts - a Localities Index and a Streets Sub-Index. The Localities Index contains a list of all Localities in Australia. In broad terms, a Locality is a place where people live or work - or say they live or work. Localities are assigned their full ASGC Main Structure code (i.e. S/T, SD, SSD and SLA codes). The majority of Localities lie wholly within one SLA but where they are split between two or more SLAs, street information is recorded in the Streets Sub-Index.

The NLI index files are available as ASCII, comma delimited text files with fixed field lengths, suitable for downloading into personal and mainframe computers. These can be downloaded from the ABS web site free of charge.

ASGC 2006 will be the last release of the NLI. For ASGC 2007 and beyond the NLI will be replaced with a web service, AddressCoder@ABS.

AddressCoder@ABS

AddressCoder@ABS is a web service that will assign a SLA or CD code to an address or a list of addresses. It will also be able to assign Mesh Block codes when these have been finalised. As a web service AddressCoder@ABS uses Internet Protocols to communicate and XML (eXtensible Markup Language) as its message format. It connects software to software and users will have to write their own applications to allow their systems to access the service.

The ABS will make this service available to external users who register with the National Data Network in the second half of 2006.

The National Data Network is an initiative of the ABS that provides a distributed library of data holdings relevant to policy analysis and research. These data holdings remain held and controlled by their Custodian organisations. The National Data Network provides a complete catalogue of available data sources allowing users to easily search for, and access the data holdings available. Data Custodians will have access to a range of web based services, protocols, procedures and tools to assist them to more efficiently manage and share data in a way that ensure security and privacy. AddressCoder@ABS will be one of those services.

Maps and digital boundaries

Maps depicting past years ASGC boundaries are included in the various editions of this publication from 1996 onwards. Maps depicting the 1981 and 1986 Census Editions were included in the respective Census Publications. Maps of the ASGC Edition 2006 Main Structure are included in this publication.

Digital boundaries for 1981 (pre ASGC), 1986 and from 1991 onwards are available in MapInfo interchange format (.MID .MIF) on several CDROM products. The 2006 ASGC digital boundaries are also available in MapInfo interchange format, these boundaries can be downloaded from the ABS web site free of charge, see Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) Digital Boundaries(cat. no. 1259.0.30.002).

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